Our Free Enterprise System And The Role Of Big Government

Floor Speech

Mr. WAMP. Mr. Speaker, what we will see over the next 60 minutes is a conversation here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives about our economy, this issue of energy, and innovation; frankly, our free enterprise system in the future, the role of the government, and I think the problems with excessive spending.

But I want to open by talking a little bit about how I have vested my time and energies as a Member of the House over these last 15 years--because it's a privilege to serve my last term here in the House as I am a candidate for governor of the State of Tennessee now--but I will tell you, I am one on the Republican side that has been extraordinarily active on alternative energy. For 8 years, I chaired the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus here in the House with Congressman--now Senator--MARK UDALL of Colorado.

We built a caucus of over half the House, almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and advocated while Republicans were in the majority for unprecedented investments in renewable energy technologies. None of us got as far as we would like to have gotten, but we need to be realistic about how far we have gotten and what the capacity is for renewable sources today.

But in 2005, we wrote the Energy Policy Act. Some people didn't like it, others did, but without question it had more investments in the renewable and energy efficiency sectors than any bill that had ever been signed into law before, and I was proud to help write that very language in that bill. So I've got a long history on alternative energy and moving towards new sources.

But I voted against the recent cap-and-trade legislation because the differences today are not differences in goals or motives, because I think all Members of the House want the United States to move away, as much as possible, from fossil fuels or dirtier ways to create energy for our country's competitiveness. But the fact is, we have not developed these alternative sources yet to move as rapidly away as the leadership of the Congress now proposes if we're going to remain competitive. Their approach is much more a regulatory approach, and our approach is much more an innovation and technology approach.

A year and a half ago, I was in China, in Shanghai, where you couldn't see from one side of the Bund, the river, to the other. Extraordinarily bad pollution. So we broached the subject with the Chinese: Where are you on the environment? Basically, the answer you get from the Chinese is, you are entitled to your industrial revolution; we're entitled to ours.

Well, there's a big difference between when the United States had their industrial revolution and China having theirs now if there's no environmental regulation, because they're literally one-fifth of the world's population and climbing, and they are far and away the biggest polluters in the world. And if you think they're doing a cap-and-trade scheme to regulate their pollution or their air quality or their carbon emissions, you're kidding yourself. They're exactly the opposite.

And here we are seriously considering a scheme that will dramatically regulate our productivity and our competitiveness, raise the cost of energy, frankly raise taxes to pay for it and, at the worst time since the Great Depression, strangle our ability actually to pull out of this economic downturn. And that is the beauty of American innovation.

Not long ago, I was personally speaking with the prime minister of Australia, and he was telling me that he had great hope for the future because the U.S. had such innovation that we would lead the world out of this economic malaise. But I've got to tell you, we are now moving more towards big government regulation and the lack of innovation than at any time in modern history, instead of moving towards it.

Now, I think this is a challenge that we share in the House, but we have got to get back to a reasonable middle ground because American innovation is the only way to turn this economy around. Our entrepreneurship is the beautiful, what I call the goose, that lays the golden egg, the engine that creates the revenues to get back to a balanced budget. That's how the budget got balanced in the 1990s. We did slow the growth of spending below inflation and that was laudable, but it was new revenues in the information sector. People like Bill Gates. We actually led the world for so long on the information revolution that revenues surpassed expenses, and we balanced the budget.

We could do that again with energy. I call it the En-Tech agenda, where we would have a robust, U.S.-led manufacturing explosion in new energy solutions instead of this regulatory scheme that says we're going to actually limit the amount of energy that can be produced by certain sources and mandate a certain amount by other sources. And the harsh reality is those sources are not available, and the irony of ironies on the floor of this House is that the very people who are opposed to coal and clean coal and new investments on how to better use fossil resources are the same people, many of them, like the gentleman from Massachusetts and the gentleman from California whose very names this legislation is under, WAXMAN and MARKEY, that are anti-nuclear.

The one single technology in the United States that can rapidly move us away from fossil electricity production, they're against it, too. So if you're against nuclear and you're against coal, what you end up being for is a lack of electricity and a lack of energy and a lack of competitiveness and a lack of innovation and a lack of manufacturing.

And the question was asked on the floor earlier this week, where are the jobs? I hate to admit this, but a lot of those jobs are in China and India, and they are going other places. That's where those jobs are, because our manufacturing sector is leaving because we're not unleashing the innovation and the entrepreneurship and the incentives for people to take risk and invest; just the opposite.

And back-to-back behind this cap-and-trade scheme, which is a big regulatory and tax burden on the American people and small business, then you talk about this health care scheme; this is a one-two punch that lands America flat on its back. And I've got to tell you, the American people are turning against it, and that's why the majority party can't pass the bills even through the committees. They have punted for the week, even though they are in a big hurry, because they want to do it before their approval rating falls too low, and they don't have the political capital to do it. And why would you rush the largest transformation in modern American society, this health care scheme, through before your political clout evaporates? That is really an un-American approach.

Now, we've got some people on the floor tonight that want to speak. Dr. VIRGINIA FOXX, an outstanding Member from North Carolina, comes, and I yield to her.

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Mr. WAMP. I thank the gentlelady for her intellect and her insight and dogged determination on behalf of the people of North Carolina. She raised two issues I want to address before yielding to the gentleman from Georgia.

One, she said that sometimes Republicans are called the Party of No. I would say to the gentlelady, if that means saying ``no'' to tax increases and large rate increases in your electricity bills at a time of economic duress by the people we represent, then, yes, we would be the Party of No.

And she said something about bad legislation was stopped. I remind people that the immigration reform proposals were made by a Republican President, and they were wrong. And Republicans in the Congress stopped the President from going forward.

One question I would ask today is: At what point are the Democrats in the majority here going to stop the Democrat President from a wrong-headed proposal when the American people are clearly against it? Yet, this is where you have to stand up and say, This is not only bad for America, Mr. President; it's bad for our party. And we said that and immigration reform did not go forward under Bush, because it was wrong-headed. The American people weren't for it.

And here, today, we would ask: Are you just going to follow the President of the United States and his Chief of Staff down this very liberal road? And for how long? And for the 52 so-called Blue Dogs, it's going to be a real test. What are you for? More for the liberal leadership of your party or the values that you say that you represent?

So I'd like to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Broun, who's been a really dynamic Member of Congress in his relatively short tenure, but he worked a long time and worked really hard to get here and he brings a depth of experience.

I yield to Dr. Broun of Georgia for as much time as he may consume.

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Mr. WAMP. Thank you, Dr. Broun. And before I yield to the gentleman from Virginia, I just want to follow up to say, in my 15 years here, I have tried to temper my partisanship. And this is not, to me, about Republicans and Democrats. It truly is about all Americans and how serious these choices that we're making are for everyone. I don't think either party has an exclusive on integrity or ideas.

The truth is, in 2009 neither party has a whole lot to brag about because, as Dr. Broun said, the previous administration--and I think President Bush restored honor and integrity to the White House at the time it needed it. He and Laura Bush are two of the finest people in history. But we lost our party's identification over these last several years by spending too much, making mistakes, and not being consistent. But that doesn't mean that what's happening today is either okay or better. As a matter of fact, it's like the mistakes we made on steroids.

The budgets proposed by this President so far exceed all of the deficit spending that President Bush had over his 8 years. It's remarkable. It's actually breathtaking that we would be doing this. The whole question of ``Where are the jobs?'' this week came up over the stimulus. Nearly $800 billion of one-time spending. No way any analyst would say more than 15 percent of that spending would even create a single job. 85 percent of it was, frankly, pent-up welfare and social spending, their priorities that they thought hadn't been funded adequately over the last 8 years. They threw all that money at new government programs and more government spending. That's why the unemployment rate in Washington, D.C., is the lowest in the country today, because Washington jobs are growing, but jobs in the hinterland are shrinking.

Now, economies rise and fall. They're cyclical by definition. But the government can either make it worse or make it better by their policies. Unfortunately, these policies are actually making it worse. That's why the question comes after the stimulus and the bailouts and the borrowing and the spending, ``Where are the jobs?'' because we're going the other way the more you do that.

It didn't work in Japan. They called it ``the lost decade'' because they tried to borrow their way into success and a good economy. It doesn't work. You can't borrow your way out of debt. You can't spend your way to prosperity. Other countries have tried it, and it failed. And here we are making this big mistake. It's not a Republican/Democrat thing. It's whoever is doing it needs to stop for the good of the American people.

I yield to the very well-schooled ranking member of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Energy and former lead Republican on the Agriculture Committee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for as much time as he needs.

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Mr. WAMP. I just want to point out that I believe there are shared goals in the House, but there clearly is some great difference in the approaches again to these goals. And the problem with these two big issues that are pending before the American people is that they involve energy and health care. And energy is the one big issue that can bring us to our knees economically. We've seen that because of the price of oil, the availability of electricity can paralyze our economy, and frankly, the cost of this move is heavy, the price is high.

And that's why it is so important--really, the big issues in the world today clearly are water--it's a big issue around the world. It's going to be scarce, harder to come by, can create conflict. Energy is going to be scarce, hard to come by. We are all interested in air quality--and the environment is important--but there has to be a balance of regulation.

And then this issue of health. The American people do not want the government to get between their health care provider and themselves, particularly between the doctor-patient relationship. And I have to tell you this leap does that. And you don't see people leaving here to go to Canada and Great Britain now for their health care. It's the other way around because they've already gone on these systems that are being proposed here.

I want to come back before the bottom of the hour and talk about nuclear. But I want to yield to a member of the Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Louisiana who's brought great expertise to the Congress, is an energy production expert because of the State that he comes from, and knows that we have to increase the energy capacity in order to maintain our competitiveness globally today in a global economy. We can't restrict our sources of energy and stay competitive.

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Mr. WAMP. I thank the gentleman. As I close out our hour tonight, I want to say when the question is asked, where are the jobs, if all of the applications pending right now before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for nuclear plants were approved, that would be 17,500 permanent jobs and 62,000 construction jobs. Nuclear is maybe the single largest step towards stimulus, economic opportunity and global warming progress, all of those things that we need.

We can reprocess and recycle the spent fuel. This administration doesn't want to bury it in Yucca Mountain. They won the election. That's their prerogative. Let's move as France has, and Japan and other countries, towards taking the spent fuel and turning it back into energy. We can deal with this. We built 100 reactors in less than 20 years, and now we know so much more about it, if we said we were going to build another 100 reactors in the next 20 years, we would have a robust U.S. economy with new electricity capacity.

And when we bring on new capacity, we will lower the cost instead of increasing the cost. This regulatory cap-and-trade scheme increases the cost, reduces the supply, by definition, because we're going to need new electricity and energy capacity. So tonight we just close, Mr. Speaker, by saying that American innovation and entrepreneurship, free enterprise, can help solve these problems without the government burden.

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